Mumbai will sacrifice Elton John

MUMBAI: Pop legend Elton John will perform in Bangalore early November. For Mumbai fans, ‘Sacrifice’ will play at an envied distance, full irony of the title rubbed in.
With the Maharashtra government bent on sacrificing live entertainment at the tax and licence gallows, the city has missed out on the big-name concerts lately, including that of ex-Pink Floyd lead Roger Waters who performed in Bangalore early this year.In the last couple of years, Scorpions, Boyzone and Jethro Tull too went to Bangalore.
In fact, Latina popster Shakira will croon in Kolkata and Bangalore next month, blacking Mumbai out of her India itinerary.
Event organisers and music companies say while Karnataka,West Bengal, Goa and Delhi governments have been making life easier for them, authorities in Maharashtra have made it virtually impossible to think of Mumbai as a preferred concert destination.
The entertainment tax for a Mumbai show is 50 per cent of the ticket price while it is 10 per cent in Bangalore, says T. Venkat Vardhan, managing director of DNA Networks, which is organising the Elton John show.
This is at a time when the Karnataka chief minister has promised to make even sponsorship of live events non-taxable. Significantly, organisers of the last year’s Bryan Adams show in Mumbai had to pay an incredible Rs 32 lakhs in taxes.
Also, in Maharashtra, an event manager needs to get 15-18 licences to host a show, compared with 3-4 licences needed in Bangalore. The latter has a single window clearance system, while one has to run from department to department for each licence in Mumbai.
Those 18 licences involve departments like health, home, electricity, police, traffic, fire brigade, insurance, sound and excise.
There is a Rangbhoomi licence which deals with obscenity, apart from innovative ones like pest control permit.
“Besides live entertainment, the government has managed to kill the thriving dandiya circuit in Mumbai by imposing steep taxes, cumbersome licencing procedures and absurd time limits,’’ says Mr Vardhan, who is also president of the Event Management association of India.
The other problem, points out Bala Achari of event management group Glamorageous Communications, is that the tax has to be paid upfront. “The government then makes people run from pillar to post to get the tax refund for unsold tickets. It sometimes takes more than two to three months to get the money back.’’
He says paying the tax in advance makes the event untenable because sponsors would only pay 30-40 per cent in the beginning, and the rest about 90 days after the concert.
And with the government playing Wee Willie Winkie, very few people want to buy tickets because by the time they manage to reach the venue from their workplace, the concert has folded up. The 10 p.m. deadline, therefore, puts additional pressure on organisers to dole out free tickets because then people at least do not mind dropping in for a few minutes, says a consultant with a music company.
The event managers, however, have figured out a way. They promote the event by tying up with cola, goggles or credit card companies so that consumers get free tickets on purchase and the Rs 300-odd ticket money is recovered from the price of the product.
While concert organisers admit Mumbai still has the best audience, they only wished the government would listen too.